There is a building furore surrounding Sony's current bid to tackle music pirates, with several anti-virus companies describing their latest digital rights management (DRM) software as a rootkit similar to those used by some viruses and hackers.
The DRM software called XCP DRM is resident on some new music CDs from Sony BMG. When inserted into a Windows PC the CD autoruns an EULA program which, when accepted by the user, then installs a set of device drivers and registry keys on the users PC. This program then limits the number of backup copies a user can make from the CD.
In its security weblog anti-virus vendor F-Secure has accused Sony of "playing with rootkits and other Blackhat techniques" used by viruses to hide the presence of its software.
Some users have reported that forcibly trying to uninstall the software using standard anti spyware utilities is causing the need for a complete re-install of Windows XP. Sony do offer users the chance to uninstall the software but it requires users to complete a form on the Sony web site.
In a response to the criticism Sony BMG have issued a patch which allows users to "uncloak" the DRM processes, revealing what has been installed by the CD, but there is no free and easily available way to remove the XCP DRM program once it has been installed.
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